For I just do not and cannot see Julius Lester's John Henry as being all that much of a potentially positive role model, as the sense of him actually doing something worthwhile and for the good of everyone is kind of majorly missing and lost at least in that last and ultimately fatal to and for him contest. However, as much as I have appreciated Julius Lester's retelling, and as much as I have indeed even much loved his included author's note on American Tall Tales (as well as of course the presented information on the genesis of the John Henry tradition in particular) I also cannot say that I have found Lester's John Henry all that much to my personal and folkloric liking (to my tastes). For although Pinkney's pictorial renderings are at times perhaps almost a trifle too overly busy for my eyes and attention span (and sometimes do seem to obtain even some modern anachronisms), their minute details are indeed both lushly rendered and also very much and successfully mirror Julius Lester's printed words (his retelling of the John Henry Tall Tale tradition), a richly nuanced narrative, chock full of delightfully evocative metaphors, similes, literary allusions (and as such, Julius Lester's text is most definitely very much as verbally dense and as full as Jerry Pinkney's pictorial renderings and vice versa, a truly and in many ways lovely and stunning marriage of text and images).

With regard to Julius Lester's 1994 John Henry, it is in particular illustrator Jerry Pinkney's 1995 Caldecott Honour winning accompanying illustrations which I have always found (and ever since first reading the book as a library copy a couple of years ago) very much personally and visually impressive (expressive).

John henry lester